Muscle-building nutrition can be overwhelming at first. How much should you eat? What foods are considered “clean”? Why are paleo and vegetarian women both healthier than average despite having seemingly contradictory dietary restrictions? What supplements should you be taking? When should you be taking them? Do you even need supplements at all?

Luckily, nutrition can also be pretty simple if you focus on the fundamentals. There are just two factors that make the difference between gaining nothing or gaining half a pound of muscle over the course of the next week. But there are hundreds of things that make the oh-so-small difference between gaining 0.50 or 0.55 pounds of muscle. If you focus on the hundreds of small details you risk struggling very hard for progress that your scale won’t even notice.

This article is designed to help you go from gaining nothing each week to gaining half a pound each week. Keep in mind that building muscle becomes harder and harder as you become more and more advanced, so we recommend learning everything eventually, but there’s plenty of time for that later—once you’re already building muscle!

So. What are those two important factors? And how can you use them to consistently gain weight on the scale, get stronger, and build lean muscle?

Right now you just need to worry about those two important factors: calories and protein.

Calories: How to Gain Weight

Food contains energy—calories. When you consume fewer calories than your body needs, you lose weight because your body is forced to burn fat/muscle to get the missing energy. When you consume more calories than your body needs, you gain weight because you store the extra energy as fat/muscle.

So “being in a caloric surplus” simply means “eating enough to gain weight.” This makes weight gain simple. Not easy, but simple: if you’re not gaining weight as quickly as you’d like, you need to increase your calorie intake.

When gaining weight under normal conditions people generally gain around 60–70% of that weight as fat. So if you gain 20 pounds while eating a regular diet and doing regular exercise (e.g. jogging) you’ll gain something like 7 pounds of muscle and 13 pounds of fat. Not great.

You can do better. Way better. In fact, if you’re new to lifting and dieting scientifically, you may even be able to lose fat while you build muscle. You won’t be able to do this forever, and you may not even be able to do it now, but at the very least the vast majority of your gains will be lean. The goal here is to gain so little fat that you don’t even notice it—all you notice is the new muscle mass.

So how do we do this?

First, to prime your body for muscle growth you need to be lifting heavy weights. If you don’t want to sign up at a gym you can lift at home with some adjustable dumbbells (and maybe an adjustable lifting bench). Nothing fancy required, but you do need to lift. No other type of exercise even comes close to weightlifting when it comes to building muscle.

With that out of the way, you need to consider the degree of your calorie surplus. We want to give your body enough extra nutrients to build muscle, but not so much that the extra, extra nutrients are stored as fat.

If your goal were fat loss, the goal would be similar—to keep the calorie deficit small enough that your body can get all the energy it needs from your fat stores without needing to cannibalize any muscle mass. A reasonable calorie deficit will also keep your hormones functioning well, your period arriving on the regular, your appetite under control, your digestive system functioning well, and your energy levels high.

There are two ways to calculate how many calories you need. The first is by taking your diet as it is now and adding in enough calories to grow. The second is by starting from scratch and calculating your body’s calorie needs from the ground up.

Option #1: Adding Enough Calories to Grow

Gaining half a pound of muscle per week requires approximately—very roughly—1,750 extra calories per week. So if you’re aiming to gain half a pound per week, you’ll need to add 200–300 calories per day. After a week step on the scale, see how you did, and adjust your calorie surplus as needed (usually in increments of around 200 additional calories per day).

This option is simple and effective, but it only works if you already have a very consistent nutrition routine. If you wake up in the morning and have breakfast, bring a packed lunch to work, and then come home and eat dinner with your family, for example. In this case, since you know exactly what you normally do, it’s very easy to strategically add in extra calories without changing your regular routine.

Here are some strategies:

Increase three meals by 100 calories each. Perhaps you do that by adding a small glass of milk to your meals. Liquid calories are fairly easy on the appetite, so this should be fairly achievable.

Adding in a couple 150 calorie snacks. Snacks have been shown to instinctively cause people to eat more, and they will allow you to keep your main meals reasonably sized. These snacks could be as simple as a homemade protein bar split in half, a whey protein shake, a handful of trail mix, or a couple pieces of fruit.

Adding in a fourth meal. Maybe a small fruit/protein smoothie, or some muesli cereal with milk and frozen berries, a homemade protein bar, or a store bought one—like a Quest bar. All of these options are quick to prepare and consume, rich in fibre, contain a fruit or vegetable (except for the Quest bar), and contain enough protein to spike muscle protein synthesis.

Dessert. If you already eat a pretty healthy diet that’s rich in protein and made up mostly of whole foods, perhaps you could just have a 500 calorie dessert after dinner. Bonus points if you make the dessert yourself.

Nothing fancy, expensive or time consuming required.

This method relies on your schedule being consistent though, otherwise you may add 200–300 calories in somewhere, feel fuller than normal, and then accidentally subtract calories out elsewhere.

If, for example, you make a sugary Starbuck’s run twice a week to satisfy some cravings… maybe those cravings are gone, you forget to go to Starbucks, and you eliminate the calorie surplus you so diligently worked to create.

Since your appetite will naturally cue you to eat enough to maintain your weight, these subconsciously caloric adjustments are very common.

This option is best if you want to rebuild your diet from the ground up. The goal here is to develop a good, consistent routine though so that you can eventually switch back to option #1. Counting calories every day is not a realistically sustainable practice for most of us. That’s more something that people do when fitness is their day job.

Sometimes though, we have to do it in the shorter term order to accomplish our physique goals. We turn fitness into a passion hobby for a while, get things under control, and then resume our other hobbies while leaving fitness to simmer pleasantly on the back burner.

After all, once you gain the weight you’re after, you’ll go back to maintaining your (new) bodyweight, i.e., you’ll go back to doing what your appetite wants you to do.

Anyway, calorie algorithms are incredibly complicated because so many factors need to be considered. Fortunately, we write to a particular niche of people with very specific goals. (We also want to credit Alan Aragon, a respected sports nutritionist, for this algorithm. We were dubious at first that such a simple algorithm could actually work, but after years of testing it in the Bombshell community it has proven itself surprisingly accurate!)

For a decently fit woman eating a balanced diet with a moderate protein intake and doing around 3 hours of strength training per week, this should get you very close to your maintenance calorie needs.

Maintenance Calories = weight (pounds) x 13

Then adjust a little based on your lifestyle:

If you wake up, drive to work and sit at a desk all day, decrease the multiplier (13) by 1, making it 12.

For every extra hour of relatively intense exercise that you do during the week in addition to your three weekly workouts add an extra 1 to the multiplier. This includes sports and other activities, but not low intensity stuff like yoga or casually biking to work. For example, if during the week you play two soccer games that each last an hour, your multiplier would be 15.

This should roughly reflect what you’re currently eating. It won’t be perfect, but it’s a good, educated guess. If the number seems way off, feel free to adjust it up or down a further 10%. Metabolisms vary from person to person, and chances are that you already know whether yours is larger or smaller than average. My metabolism is hellish furnace, so I need to eat a little more than your average dude. As a naturally skinny gal, you may be in the same bony boat.

Now we just need to add in the calorie surplus. Just like with option #1, this means adding 200–300 calories per day on top of your maintenance needs.

Adjust Your Calories Each Week (if Needed)

Either method will give you a rough starting point, but everyone is a little different. To absolutely guarantee that you’re consistently building muscle you’ll need to track your results and adjust as you go. (This will also correct for calorie tracking errors or too-loose guesstimations.)

Weigh yourself each week and see how much your weight has changed. We recommend waking up on Sunday morning, peeing, and then stepping on the scale. This will keep your stomach contents, hydration, etc. as consistent as possible each week. Then, if you aren’t seeing the weight-gain results that you want, simply adjust your daily calorie goals up by 200 calories. If you are gaining weight too fast, you can adjust your daily calorie goals down by 200 calories.

If you’re trying to build muscle you’ll probably want to gain 0.3–0.5 pounds per week, so you’d adjust your calories up or down to get closer to that pace. 0.3 pounds per week is good if you’re more afraid of gaining fat, 0.5 pounds per week is good if you’re more eager to gain muscle.

This is how you absolutely guarantee progress. If something isn’t working, you strategically adjust it until it does. When it comes to bodyweight change, calorie intake is the variable that you want to adjust. If you finish up a few weeks of weightlifting, you still weigh the same amount, and you’re thinking “Damn, where’s all my muscle at? Why isn’t this working?” Well you’re just looking for the problem in the wrong place. The recipe is fine, you just need more ingredients—more calories.

Protein

Why is protein important? Weightlifting will get your body trying to build muscle, getting into a calorie surplus will give you enough energy to gain weight, and consuming enough protein will give your body the building blocks that it needs to construct new muscle tissue. (Muscle is made out of protein.) This is the trifecta of muscle growth: lift enough weight, eat enough calories, and eat enough protein.

How much protein? There are some experimental new studies showing a potential muscle-building benefit to consuming as much as 1.5 grams per pound bodyweight (3.3 grams per kilo), but most research shows that muscle is built optimally with around 1 gram per pound bodyweight (2.2 grams per kilo). Probably more than you eat right now, but actually a pretty modest protein intake compared to what most fitness models eat.

Keep in mind that this is how much protein it takes to build muscle. Muscle doesn’t take much protein to maintain, and in addition to that, over time we become better at digesting and using protein. This is why you’ll sometimes see very muscular people eating far less protein than this. This means that in the future you can reduce your protein intake by quite a bit as well.

However, right now you’re going to be building muscle at a rapid pace while also being rather inefficient at turning that protein into muscle mass. So I would try to stay above that gram per pound.

What are good protein sources? There are lots of great protein sources: chicken, fish, milk, yoghurt, cottage cheese, eggs, beans, peas, red meat, grains, soy, etc. This makes eating enough protein pretty easy if your diet has no restrictions. If your diet does have restrictions though, or eating enough protein is still a struggle, we’d recommend getting some protein powder.

Whey protein is cheaper than chicken, fantastic for building muscle, and quite nutritious. However, there are many great types of protein powders. For example, pea + rice protein powder is great for people who have problems with dairy or prefer avoiding animal products.

Is this healthy? Absolutely! Diets higher in protein are just as healthy as diets that are lower in protein. The only difference is that a diet higher in protein supports a more athletic physique, whereas a diet higher in fruits, grains, veggies and healthy fats supports a more sedentary physique. Even vegan athletes and lifters eat plenty of protein.

Does it matter how I divide up my protein intake? Hitting your overall daily protein goal is the most important thing, but splitting up your protein intake somewhat evenly over the course of the day can help too.

Having 30+ grams with breakfast, lunch and dinner is pretty great. If you weigh, say, 130 pounds, then that could be 30 grams with breakfast + 30 grams with lunch + 40 grams with dinner + a whey protein shake as a snack. That would give you 130 grams total. That’s a pretty normal way to take in enough protein to grow.

If you have fewer than three meals… consider eating more meals! When trying to build muscle it’s very important that you don’t accidentally skip meals (or deliberately start intermittent fasting). Not only will that make it harder to hit your calorie/protein goals for the day, but it will also mean that your body will spend less time being in “muscle-building mode.”

It’s a myth that you need to eat every three hours to stoke your metabolic fire, but you do need to spike protein synthesis several times per day if you want to build muscle leanly at a reasonable pace.

Make Eating Achievable, Lazy (MEAL)

This is the muscle-building variant to the KISS acronym that I’ve just now invented. When you’re trying to eat more calories don’t go complicating things. Your diet doesn’t need to be simple—the more variety and fun you have with it the better—but it does need to be achievable. If you aren’t already paleo, low carb, intermittent fasting, avoiding gluten, eating “clean”, etc—don’t go starting now.

I know these approaches to nutrition provide simple rules—eat everything except for meat, or everything except for gluten, or everything that a caveman would eat. That’s simple, and when faced with the overwhelming task of creating a muscle-building diet, simple can be so, so alluring.

But also keep in mind that most of these food group avoidance things are designed for overweight people who need to restrict their calories in order to get down to a healthy bodyweight. As someone who is trying to gain weight you need to do the opposite: keep your diet open, keep your diet indulgent, and keep your diet fun.

Yes, you should be trying to get most of your calories from whole foods, having some fruit or veggies with most meals, having protein with most meals—all of which are great for your health—but you should also be having dessert like you always do, cooking those richly flavoured meals that you love, having a drink here and there, and not ordering the garden salad at restaurants as your main meal.

You’re trying to gain weight, you’re trying to build muscle, and you’re trying to get strong. This is not a situation where you need to remove easy, delicious sources of calories. This is a situation where you need to expand what you eat. This is about adding nutritious, delicious things into a routine that’s already easy, not time to overhaul everything and start eating totally “clean.”

If you normally wake up and have coffee and a muffin at Starbucks for breakfast, switch that to having a latte, a muffin, and a fruit at Starbucks for breakfast. Your routine is the same, it won’t require a ton of willpower… but the milk in the latte adds protein and calories, the fruit adds calories, fibre, phytonutrients and vitamins. This is how you get started bulking—by keeping things realistically achievable. So realistically achievable that even when you’re lazy you can still succeed.

Summary

Now you know why both vegan and paleo diets are healthier than average: they help the average, overweight person consume fewer calories and fewer processed foods. This causes some weight loss (which is healthy for them), gives them more fibre and helps to fix up nutrient deficiencies.

While this guide provides a simple how-to for a beginner looking to build muscle, I know that it’s not actually simple to do. It’s hard to eat enough calories to gain weight, and it’s hard to eat enough protein.

We’ll be writing about how to make eating enough to gain weight easier in the future, but if you want to get started now, The Bony to Bombshell Program is packed full of evidence based appetite hacks, recipes, and sample meal plans that are highly customizable. It also includes all the advanced nutrition techniques that will further accelerate your gains, 5 months of muscle-building workouts, and a yearlong membership of coaching from us inside the Bombshell member community.

Alright, now here are the main takeaways:

Make sure you’re lifting before going gung-ho with calories.

0.3–0.5 pounds per week is a good pace to be gaining weight as a naturally skinny woman who’s trying to build muscle leanly and healthfully.

If your diet is already made up mostly of whole whole foods, is fairly consistent, and your weight stays about the same each week, then you don’t need to start from scratch. Adding 200–300 calories to what you’re already eating is a simple way to get into a calorie surplus.

If your diet needs a total overhaul, 13x your bodyweight (in pounds) is probably how much you need to eat to maintain your weight. To begin gaining weight at a good pace, add 20% to that.

Your weekly caloric surplus is what will determine how much weight you gain that week, but the leanest gains are from small, consistent daily surpluses. Do not under eat by 500 calories one day and then try and make up for it by overeating by 1,000 calories the next day.

Eat 1 gram of protein per pound bodyweight (2.2 grams per kilo).

Eat the foods you already love—just add more calories & protein.

Don’t fret about advanced nutrition techniques until this is easy!

And remember, your appetite is no fool, and your body will always be trying to keep your weight the same. This means that if you hit your calorie goal one day, you may forget to eat breakfast the next. This is your body’s attempt to restore balance—to eradicate the surplus you worked so hard to create. Don’t let this happen. Be mindful of how much you’re eating all week long, and make sure to carry around some emergency calories (like trail mix or protein bars).

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52 Comments

Juleson April 6, 2016 at 4:56 pm

Thank you so much! As a mom of two babies, 24 years old and always struggling to gain weight i finally have something to follow, u guys are amazing. I cant wait to see if i can finally gain some weight and build muscle and not look like my usual bony self.

I have always been slender/skinny all my life but since my daughter was born 6 years ago I have struggled with weight even more so than before since I’ve been diagnosed with a Hyperthyroid. My thyroid numbers have been stable for the last 4 years without medication but I’m still having difficulties gaining weight I was wondering if this program would still be able to help me because I’m very interested in the program. I’m looking gain around 15 to 20 lbs though. I’m 5’6″ with a small build currently weigh around 105-107 lbs. Thank you.

How does your program work for older women? I’m 51, naturally thin, in very good shape, and dropped even more weight recently because of personal crisis so at 5′ 5″ I’m hovering around 100 lbs. I bike, walk, do yoga, and occasionally go to the gym just to feel good – never to lose weight. I would like to put on some muscle and of course get a few curves back!

The program should work similarly for women between the ages of 18 and 60, as crazy as that sounds. You aren’t really considered “old” yet by muscle-building standards. Sounds like your lifestyle isn’t that of an old woman either—it sounds awesome! However, given that none of your day-to-day fitness routine involves lifting heavy things, we’ll want to start you off a little lighter so that we can build up your tendon, ligament and bone strength for a few weeks before progressing to the heavier lifting. We can help you with that 🙂

I am just about as “petite” as they come. For as long as I can remember I have weighed about 90 lbs. I am currently 88 lbs and stand 5’1. I am getting married July 2nd of this year and am desperate to fill out my wedding dress. The program looks great and I would kill for some of the results the women in the pictures and testimonials have had. I am nervous because I am not sure I will be able to follow it by myself. I would feel so much better meeting with someone in person but know that is not what this program is like. I have read the article and watched the videos about the 3 beginner exercises. They seem to be something that I can do. I will need to buy weights and am not sure exactly what to get. I am also concerned about knowing what to eat, how much to eat and all of that nutritional stuff. is there any advice you can give short of me purchasing the program?

Congrats on your engagement! If you are planning on doing some muscle-building, it’s good to do your fitting ideally after you’ve added muscle!

The program includes online coaching, and we help you learn how much to eat, what you should be eating, etc. All those details are included. And we can help you figure out what to order if there is no local gym nearby (which can help if you want to test the waters). We don’t recommend much, just two heavy adjustable dumbbells and a bench.

Our program comes with 60 days of money back guarantee, so you can definitely try the program and have a look without fully committing. That way you can see if it’s something you’ll feel comfortable with trying.

I am 5’2″ at 108lbs. I have been trying to gain weight but it’s a HUGE struggle because I work LONG hours and am always on my feet (I’m a teacher). I was hoping that your program will help me gain at least 10lbs. by the end of the summer. Also, does your program have a weight gain diet for people like me that always on the go? I try to eat more but I might be working out too much. REALLY need help with this!

The nutrition sections in the guide should give you everything you’ll need to know about gaining weight and building muscle. So if you’re on the go a lot, you can get clever about it. You can make some homemade protein bars to take on the go, you could make a smoothie and bring it in a sealed container (something like a Thermos), nuts and dried fruits are easy to store in your desk, which foods will help you reach your goals that are available at the cafeteria, etc.

Hi Shane, I know you specialize in thin women looking to gain for a more curvaceous figure, but I can’t find many resources for women who are already curvy and looking to gain muscle to reach a SUPER curvy physique. I’m already quite curvy with a .062 WHR, so I am happy on that front, but I have very little muscle and look a little too “soft” for my liking even though my measurements themselves are, imo, very good (33-24-39). I’m 5’1 and 134 lbs which is fairly heavy for my height and on the cusp of “overweight” in terms of BMI, so I’m not sure if I should take on gaining muscle and risking gaining more weight, or if i should lose weight, then gaining muscle. I’m afraid of my breasts sagging and losing my hips by losing another 10 lbs! Any guidance here would be much appreciated. Loving your blog!

You can definitely use our content to boost an already curvaceous physique! In fact, our program is absolutely perfect for that.

In your particular case, being new to lifting and on the cusp of being overweight, you can lose fat AND build muscle at the same time. Not many people can do it. You certainly can. To do this, you’d slowly lose weight overall (around a pound each week) by going into a small calorie deficit (around 500 fewer calories per day than normal) while doing a muscle-building workout program and eating enough protein. We call this cutting because the goal is to cut off fat while gaining or maintaining your muscle mass.

For most, a gram of protein per pound bodyweight is good when cutting. Since your body weight has a little more fat right now, and fat doesn’t require protein to maintain, you can probably get away with a minimum of 0.8 grams of protein per pound bodyweight instead.

If you want a full program for this with coaching along the way, I highly recommend our Bony to Bombshell Program. You sound like a great fit and I really think you’d love it!

I m skinny and at the height of 5’11 and have a pretty healthy weight but my figure isn’t so even. I’ve got really wide shoulders which totally eclipse my small waist & if I say so myself average hip size. Has there been anyone whose kinda made it less prominent? I hope weight gain would help, but you cant change bone structure & I don’t think Its possible to make the hips wide enough to counter the appearance of my shoulders. So Is It possible to change it? Will this help?

You can’t change your bone structure, but you can change how much muscle is overtop of it. So you’re right, you won’t be able to make your hips that much wider. A little bit, yes, since muscle can fill out the sides of your hips a little, but most of what you’d be doing by building muscle would be making your hips deeper. That would have a pretty profound impact on your physique and help balance out your broader shoulders 🙂

I am 49 and in fairly good condition. I am 5’6” and years ago weighed 170. After completing graduate school I was able to get back in control and lose weight. But now I’m down to 105 and people are worried. I need to gain but in a healthy way. I like your program, but I am worried that due to some previous sports injuries I won’t be able to lift “heavy” weights without consequences. (back, neck, knees) What do you suggest?

The program includes coaching and adjustments. We could help you work around your injuries so that you can build muscle without aggravating them. If you can’t lift heavy, that’s okay too. We’ll figure out what you can and cannot do and take it from there.

I am extremely interested in this program. Along with the guide of weight lifting do you also provide a FULL nutrition guide? As in what i need to eat breakfast lunch dinner/ what snacks i need to be eating in between as wel as which exact protein shakes and at which times etc. etc. I am 23/ 5’7 / 95 pounds yuck Goal weight is 125

We do! Full nutrition guide. We’ve found that it’s easier to make your own meal plan out of your own personal preferences. But we have sample meal plans that you can use, and then to make them more enjoyable to follow, you could swap in your own recipes (or use some of our recipes—we have those too!).

Hi, I am very interested in this programme! I’m currently 5″4, 92lb – I have some gains to make!

I was wondering how much you can help women who aren’t naturally skinny, but just come from a background of chronic undereating? I may be small framed but I’m pretty sure my metabolism is all kinds of messed up.

Also – I just ran my numbers through your formula and it tells me I should maintain my weight on less than 1200 a day – that is far less than any formula I’ve seen, surely that is just my bmr??

We can definitely help anyone who is looking to build muscle / gain weight, including you. The only difference is that the writing is speaking to someone who struggles to, for example, eat enough to gain weight. You might be reading our appetite hacks and thinking, “Psh, I can eat enough to gain weight in my sleep!” But so long as you don’t mind that, we’d love to have you 🙂

As for the calorie estimate, that’s a good point, and we thought the same thing at first. We thought the numbers must be too low for sure. But after double-checking our research and then testing it on all of our members, it worked out quite well. However, you’re quite light, so it’s probably underestimating your calorie intake a little. You may want to raise that estimate by 10–20%. And, of course, if eating even that higher amount doesn’t lead to the right amount of weight gain, adjust further as needed. (We can help you with that.)

This seems like a great program. I’d love to join but unfortunately I am a poor, starving graduate student and can’t afford it. I’m trying to do some strength training on my own but I hate the gym and don’t have enough space to work out at home. Any advice for getting over gym-phobia? I always feel like I don’t know what I am doing and will look silly if I try anything new. Even if I go when the gym is mostly empty I still feel super awkward standing in a corner doing dumbell curls. I love fitness classes, but those mostly just burn calories which doesn’t help a skinny girl. How do you make weight lifting exciting?

That’s great that you’ve started already on your own! This article on nutrition was designed to be complementary to the beginner’s guide to working out article. You can read that article here.

What I’ve found helpful for getting over gym-phobia is like treating how some different phobias are treated, with lots of repeated exposure. I’d recommend going at a non-busy time of day like you’re already doing and having a plan written down or printed out and sticking to it. If you are there winging it, it’s going to feel a little awkward. But if you go into the gym with a gameplan, it’s a lot easier to just mind your own business and stick to it. Some people find it easier to have a trainer show them around the lifts once or twice to get the idea, or going with a friend. But the trainer might be out of your budget, and the friend might (probably) bail. As you grow in experience though, it’ll get easier and easier to continue to hit the gym.

PS I am going to send you more information about our student payment plan to see if that’s helpful in any way 🙂

I’m new to this website, and I wanted to ask about bony spine, I have been following a somewhat “eat what you like” diet because I’m not good nor want to follow a certain diet program, however, my looks changed a little (I haven’t gained much weight and I don’t really care about that), I have become more toned, however by bony spine refuses to be covered with any muscles even though I’m doing pilates core exercises with focus on the back and I tend to have back pain every morning when I wake up and occasionally during the day too. I’m also trying to eat a bit more with focus on protein specially eggs and dairy products as I really like them. I don’t know what to do about this annoying bony back of mine. Is there anything I can do for it?

There are a lot of things you can do to fix this. Lifting weights should help. Especially rows, squats and deadlifts. That trio will thicken the muscles the surround your spine (spinal erectors) as well as the muscles in your upper back.

You’re also right to focus on nutrition, although I’m not sure a “eat what you like” diet is necessarily the right approach. The diet that’s famous for skinny people who don’t want to follow a specific diet program is called the “seefood diet,” where you eat everything that you see. The idea is to not be too choosey about what you eat, but rather to focus on how much you eat. Because, frankly, if you only eat what you like, you’ll never eat enough to gain weight.

To gain weight I recommend: a) Eating specific foods that allow you to eat more food more easily (a very loose diet program) b) Eat whatever you like, but eat meals even when you aren’t hungry, and keep eating even after you’re full.

I recommend the former, but the latter will work as well.

The third thing you can do is work on your posture. I’d be willing to bet that part of the reason your back looks bony is because your posture is a little wonky. You don’t have to focus on this, but you can do it at the same time as gaining weight 🙂

Oh My Gosh, you’re so right about my posture. I try to watch my posture but it hurts to keep my back straight all the time. I try to mediate everyday but I’m never able to keep my back straight for more than a minute, however i will skates keep training myself to Kerri it straight. Unfortunately I’m not always able to eat more, I just can’t fit more food in my stomach but I keep trying to increase my food intake a little even if it was just an extra cup of milk. I will try to incorporate these exercises in my workout program.

Eating more is such a simple suggestion, but yeah, when it comes to actually doing it… brutal. If your stomach can’t handle more food in your stomach, it might help to eat more often—snacks between meals and whatnot. Liquid calories can be a good technique as well. Also, focusing on really dense sources of calories, like dried fruits and nuts (aka trail mix).

Hi! I love, love the sound of this, but am a bit weary. I’m 21 years old. 5’0-5’1 and fluctuate between 90-96 pounds and DAMNIT I EAT! I am 98 % sure I will be purchasing the program, but I have a question. How will I know I am doing the exercises/lifting properly? I’m scared of doing them improperly and either gaining in a weird/bulky way or not gaining at all. I want people to stop calling me twelve or telling me I’m going to blow away, lol. I want people to stop telling me I need to eat more McDonald’s I want to feel like a woman.

Ahaha, I know. The eating, it’s so frustrating. And I really hope we can help you figure that out. We should be able to. That’s our specialty 🙂

How will you know if you’re doing the exercises properly? We teach them using instructional videos, and Marco’s pretty good at being clear and keeping things simple. We also start with the simpler variations and work our way up to the more complex ones. So a lot of the challenges of, say, back squatting, you’ll already have figured out because you will have mastered the goblet squat and then the front squat first, both of which are far easier to learn. You can also take videos of yourself doing the lifts, though. That way we can give you feedback. We rarely run into someone doing something dangerous (like a round-backed deadlift), but we can usually give you some tips to get your form improving more quickly than if you just kept practicing on your own using the videos + progressions.

Many women love breastfeeding since it helps you get back down to your pre-pregnancy weight. But some people are struggling to keep their weight on, if they don’t have a lot on them, when breastfeeding, since so many calories are going out.

This study says: “energy needs for an exclusively breastfeeding woman are approximately 670 kcal/day. If one allows for gradual weight loss, the net increment needed is about 500 kcal/day. … The recommended increment in protein intake during lactation has been estimated to be about 15 g/day, based on a milk protein concentration of 11 g/liter. However, if one takes into account the protein cost of non-protein nitrogen in human milk, the recommended increment in protein is about 20 g/day.”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9240917

So basically what it’s saying is to neutralize weight loss, you’d need to eat an additional 670 calories per day, compared to if you weren’t breastfeeding. You’d also need to eat an additional 20g of protein per day, since so much of that is going out through your milk.

So if you’re trying to gain weight and build muscle, first you’d have to at least 670 calories / 20g of protein, and then go above and beyond that. In our article above we show that the research is showing to eat around 1g of protein per bodyweight pound if you want to gain muscle, then theoretically, you’d add 20g on top of that for breastfeeding needs. So if you weigh 120 pounds, you might want to eat around 140g of protein daily, if you’re trying to build muscle while breastfeeding.

Keep in mind that we aren’t doctors, and that you should also consult a doctor or a professional in person to talk about any diet or nutritional changes. This becomes even more important when it involves prenatal, pregnancy, or post-pregnancy questions.

I’m extremelyyy tiny at 98 pounds and 5’6 so I’m sure you can see the obvious problem. I’m long and too skinny. I have some dietary restrictions (pork..etc) and just need some reassurance that this program will definitely work. Was also wondering if each workout plan starts at a beginners level or does it depend on weight….

I really want to purchase this program but I have a question. I am 5′ and 100 pounds. Reading this and calculating my maintenance calorie intake it would be 1300 which is very low. I currently eat 1800 calories a day, working 5 days full time standing on my feet (I’m a barista) and strength training 3-4 times a week. Even if I added the 300 extra calories a day on top of the 1300 maintenance calories, that would only be 1600. I’m a bit confused because even consuming 1800 calories doesn’t make me gain weight, so eating less than that I assume it would make me lose weight..?

These are only estimates to start from. It sounds like your NEAT is really high (Non-exercise activity thermogenesis) from work. Then strength training, etc.

If you are tracking daily and you know for a fact that you’re eating 1800 calories, then that’s currently your maintenance. So you can add 200-300 calories per day to that and get up to 2000–2100 daily.

I’m not sure why they’re super popular. Possibly about the hopes of being more efficient and helping with energy in the gym. It’s still contentious but most evidence seems to be saying there’s no benefit to them.

You will get all the BCAA’s you need from whey if you supplement with it. So you can ignore the fads and stick with the fundamentals that have tons of research behind it.

If you love supplements and just want to experiment, Xtend seems to have the most research behind it. Personally I’d take that money and keep it for whey isolate.

Hi! I’m 16 years old, with 104 lbs and am 5’4. Im not super skinny or anything, I just want to gain wight and have a more toned body. I’m a vegetarian so its hard for me to eat foods high in calories since i don’t eat meat. It’s also very hard for me to regularly workout and have big meals because of school. Do you have any advise?

That will often happen, yes. Every new pound of muscle will burn an extra 6 calories per day. So if you were to gain 10 pounds of muscle, you’d be looking at an extra 60 calories per day to fuel your new, stronger body.

Now, that’s not the whole picture. As you’re gaining weight, your metabolism will also adapt. This can mean that you start burning extra calories simply because you’re eating a lot of calories. This depends on your genetics, but it’s really common for us naturally skinny people to have very adaptive metabolisms, which means that our calorie demands just keep climbing higher as we continue to bulk up.

You can take a break from bulking though, and you can bring your metabolism back down. So, for example, let’s say that you gain 10 pounds of muscle and you’re eating 300 extra calories per day, but you’d rather only be eating 60 extra calories per day. At that point, you can gradually reduce your calorie intake while continuing to lift weights. Your body will adapt to the new, lower intake and you’ll be good to go 🙂

I would get that checked out with your doctor just to rule out any medical conditions, but it’s fairly common for us naturally skinny people to struggle with a lower-than-average appetite.

One thing that can help is lifting weights. I’m not sure if you’re doing that already. When you stimulate your muscles properly, they will want to grow, and so your body will often raise your appetite accordingly. It works in most people.

Another thing you could try is improving your sleep quantity and/or quality if either one is lacking.

Another option is to just eat what you need to eat whether you’re hungry or not. When doing that, you could try eating foods that are easier on your appetite, or even foods that will stimulate a larger appetite later on. For example, starting the day with a fruit/protein smoothie will give you a good chance of having a healthy appetite when lunch time rolls around.

Hell , lovely bombshell writers and members! I’ve noticed there “3 hours training per week”, but i do at least 4 hours per weak, considering that i’m performing exercises adviced by you and my own chosen ones. Is it that bad training too much/incrementing sets and weights by 2.5 kg per week?